


The Price of Privacy

by andacus



Series: What Happens in Bangkok Totally Doesn't Stay in Bangkok. [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Darcy Centric, Dysfunctional Family, Explicit Language, F/M, Family, Mommy Issues, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tony Stark Has Daddy Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-22 00:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andacus/pseuds/andacus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis looks like her grandmother.  It's sort of a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price of Privacy

**Author's Note:**

> For those of you who read Living Someone Else's Life, HI AND THANKS FOR COMING! This is a follow up to that, obviously. For those of you who have not read the aforementioned story, you might want to. While it's not absolutely necessary, there are things here that I don't explain or redefine that will be confusing if you did not read the other one.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.

Darcy Lewis looks like her grandmother. It’s sort of a problem.

It doesn’t occur to anyone at first. Everyone (okay, well, the people in the know, at any rate, of which there are very few) always just say she looks like Tony. And, really, when compared to her mother’s blond hair, narrow hips and freckled skin, of course she looks more like Tony. But Tony looks so much like his own father that the comparisons end there. Darcy assumes this is because no one wants to say, “My, but you look like Howard Stark,” for which she is grateful, because obviously.

And, honestly, it doesn’t occur to Darcy either. She’s been too caught up in her life to really think about things that aren’t the new upgrades to Natasha’s bracelets or the glitch in the rotation algorithm for the prototype quiver she’s been working on or navigating her relationship with Tony, which... yeah. She’s been stupidly busy since she took the job for Stark Industries and since she started seeing Clint and since that whole Tony Stark is technically her father debacle.

It’s not like Darcy is looking for the spotlight. In fact, she much prefers the shadowy places around the edges of the spotlight. But she can’t just pretend she doesn’t do things with her friends or that she doesn’t sometimes like to go out to dinner with her boyfriend. Luckily, Clint is sort of still undercover (kind of) so they don’t get bothered too much, but it only takes one eagle-eyed cameraman to realize that the same woman keeps popping up in the backs and on the edges of photos and that this particular woman is the very same whose missing poster was plastered across TVs the world over a few months ago. 

So, _of course_ the whole thing gets as twisted as it could possibly get. In hindsight, someone should have seen this coming.

***

Darcy wanders into the shop, still only half awake and sucking down coffee like she’ll never get to again. The door swings open and the music drops to a whisper, which causes a series of curses to erupt from across the room. Tony’s head pops up from behind one of the suits he’s working on, consternation written all over his face, but when he realizes why the music dropped, he grunts and gets back to work.

She sits down at her workstation, riffles through the papers that are not hers, and then in a fit of annoyance, dumps them all on the ground.

“Hey,” Tony says, stalking across the room, glaring. “Don’t throw stuff on the floor.”

“Don’t put your stuff on my desk.”

“First, it’s not my stuff. Second, technically, it’s my desk and I can do whatever I want with it.”

Darcy narrows her eyes. “Technically, if you die, it’s _my_ desk and I will go to extremes to keep your shit off my desk!”

“Whoa. Is this a woman thing? Do you need to talk to Pepper? I’m not good with this sort of mood-swing situation.”

“I’m not thirteen, Tony, Jesus. I can control my moods. Despite genetics.”

“Excuse you?”

“I’m just a little stressed out and you have shit all over the place and it makes me antsy!”

She didn’t quite realize it before, but Darcy is very organized. Organized to the point that his constantly shifting piles of stuff are driving her insane. It isn’t that Tony’s unorganized; in fact, he’s pretty much the reigning king of the Type A’s. She’s almost convinced droves of ambitious, OCD, workaholics pay him tithes and stand at worship at exactly the same time and place every day. It isn’t his mess that’s making her grumpy, it’s the crap he’s refusing to claim as his mess that’s making her grumpy. And if any more of it invades her space she’s going to scream.

Tony observes her for a moment and then says, “JARVIS, get Frank down here, please.”

She can’t help the exasperated huff and the way her hands ball into fists. Frank is Tony’s new Pepper-enforced PA and he is the entire reason there are folders and stacks of papers on her desk. 

“Is that a petulant look? Are we making up for all the teenage years I was lucky enough to miss?”

“This entire problem is because of Frank, Tony. Are you just going to give up and sign three weeks worth of documents so he can take them away?” She glares and points a finger in his face. “The answer to that had better be yes, because I swear to god if this standoff lasts any longer, I will torch everything you own and have you sent far, far away.”

“Jesus, you’re like mini Howard. Is there a boarding school you’d like to send me to? You remember how I said I was going to make you a suit? Forget it. Just never mind the whole thing. Also, you’re grounded.”

“You can’t ground me. I’m an adult. And I don’t want a suit anyway.”

Tony scoffs and spins away from her. “Yes, you do.”

“What is the opposite of nepotism? Can you do that instead?”

“Uh, you wanted to see me, Mr. Stark?”

Tony swivels to look at Frank, who is standing rigidly in the doorway. He’s a stringbean of a man with salt and pepper hair and a narrow jaw. Darcy suspects, despite the way the Great Paperwork War of 2013 is going, that he’s really a big wimp. He is, however, operating with Pepper as an enforcer _and_ a safety net, so whatever natural tendency he has for cowering, is nowhere to be seen.

“Darcy would appreciate it if you didn’t pile your crap on her desk.”

“I believe those are documents that you are meant to sign, sir.”

“We talked about this,” Tony says, brandishing a blow torch menacingly. “I am not signing those. I don’t need to. I have people for that.”

“Miss Potts -”

“Don’t Miss Potts at me,” Tony grumps. “There are people who can sign those who are not me. I am very busy!”

Frank and Tony continue to argue and Frank gets fired about four times, which does no good because Tony can’t actually even fire his own PA, before Darcy decides fuck it, she’s taking the day off. They don’t even look up as she leaves.

She’s been holed up in the shop or, even worse, the lab, so much lately that she’s starting to feel a little claustrophobic, so the first thing she does when she leaves is go out on the deck. She’s also been so frustrated lately that the second thing she does is scream very loudly.

“Wow,” Jane says from behind her, sliding the door closed and crossing to stand next to Darcy at the railing. “That was pretty impressive.”

“I’m going to kill him. And then the general public will want my head because I killed Iron Man and then I’ll be an orphan, because I will also kill my mother, because she will be very smug about the whole thing and piss me off.” Darcy sucks in a breath and squeezes her eyes shut. “And I’m talking in run-on sentences.”

“What was it this time?”

“I’m just working too much. And spending too much time with Tony. I need a mental health day.”

Jane looks hesitant and sort of torn and she wrinkles her brow before replying. “I, uh, can spend the day with you, if you want.”

Darcy laughs a little and smiles. “No, it’s okay, I know you have all kinds of science to do. Besides, I need a vacation from myself as much as I need one from Tony. I’m going this one alone.”

Clint’s at the firing range when she tracks him down a few minutes later and she almost abandons her plan in favor of stripping him naked and having her way with him; it’s really sexy watching him work.

“Hey,” he says, setting his bow down.

“I’m taking the day off and going to spend the next several hours in a spa of some sort. Probably there will be vats of mud. And hot towels. Maybe seaweed.”

Clint lifts his eyebrows, but says nothing.

“I’ve never been to a spa, but it sounds nice.” She adds, wistfully.

He slides his hands around her hips and kisses her. “Aw, man, that’s what _I_ was going to do today.”

Laughing, Darcy untangles herself from him and reluctantly leaves him to his targets and his arrows.

JARVIS helpfully provides the name of Pepper’s favorite spa (in New York, because much to JARVIS’ confusion, Paris is not on today’s agenda) and politely keeps his mouth shut while Darcy steals one of Tony’s Audis.

She’s only made it about two blocks when her music shuts off and JARVIS interrupts. “I am afraid, Darcy, that I’ve been instructed to tell you to - and I quote - ‘Buy her own damn car.’”

“J, do me a favor and just patch me through to him.”

“Where’re you off to today that isn’t here where I need you?” He says as soon as the line connects.

“I’m taking a Darcy-Needs-To-Chill-Out-And-Get-Away-From-Tony Day. I don’t know if anyone has told you this before, but you’re sort of difficult to be around.”

“Weird. I’ve never heard that.”

“Lets start over tomorrow, okay? I’ll show up in the morning and I will still like you and you will still like me and we will have a fun day and blow at least one thing up. Okay?”

“Deal,” he says immediately.

“Bye. See you tomorrow.”

“Later,” he says and the line disconnects.

But Darcy never makes it to the relaxing portion of her spa day, because she’s only just sat down in the (admittedly lush) lobby when she spots a magazine with her picture on it. Okay, well, it’s a picture of Tony, but she’s in the background and her face is circled in bright red. The headline reads: Who’s That Girl?

Snatching up the magazine, Darcy flips through to the article and her eyes nearly pop out of her head. There are ten (she counted, because what the fuck?) pictures of her with various members of the team, but mostly with Tony. She gets a sinking feeling in her gut.

Another woman across the room peers over her own magazine at Darcy and gives her an odd look. The magazine she’s peeking over is, of course, the same one that Darcy is gaping at, and there’s a look in the woman’s eyes - a look like recognition and maybe contempt. 

Darcy looks back to the magazine and starts reading and she’s instantly sorry she did. When she looks up again, the woman is pretending not to glare at her and Darcy’s pretty sure she can see a phone in her hand which can only mean bad, bad things. But, well, there’s this really unfortunate streak of defiant idiocy that seems to run in Darcy’s family and she looks up and snaps, “Did you get a good picture? Is it clear that I’m reading about myself? Go ahead, take another!” before standing up and storming out.

She does manage to wait until she’s in the car before she calls Tony, which, hey... small victories.

“Change your mind and decide to come home and help me with this?” Tony says.

“No. I’ve just read the most interesting article. The Inquirer has printed an _amusing_ list of guesses as to _who I am!_.

“Well, it is a good question. Who are you again?”

“Tony.”

“No, the universe can only have one of me. It’s a whole temporal-space-balance thing and-”

“Tony!”

“Darcy, it’s fine. They were always going to speculate.”

“No, it’s not fine. There was a poll! A poll of the public! Do you know what the public thinks? They think we’re sleeping together!”

“Ew.”

“Yes, ew! Very ew. All of the ew!”

“Well, I see only two solutions.”

Darcy cringes.

“You can either confess to being the unfortunate heir to the Stark _Mis_ fortune or you can go public with your Lolita-esque romance.”

She steers the car around traffic and wishes she were a millions miles from New York. “We’re not _not_ public.”

He makes a face. She knows he makes a face, she can hear it through the phone. “Apparently you are.”

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t.”

Darcy hangs up and maybe she stews a little the rest of the way home, but she thinks she’s perfectly entitled to stewing. This is a fucked up situation. She wants to blame Tony, because the man is such a damn blabbermouth and she did watch the press conference he held when she was kidnapped and she can’t really blame people for thinking there’s something going on between them. But what about Pepper? It’s not like they’re any kind of secret, in fact, they’re the opposite of secret.

Frustrated, she grumbles all the way home and once the car is parked safely back in the garage, Darcy decides to go for a walk. The guy who’s been trailing her, because she lives with paranoid authority figures and can’t actually go anywhere alone, follows her outside.

“You know what, Gary,” Darcy says to the man who is failing to look inconspicuous, “you can totally walk next to me instead of ten feet behind.”

“It’s easier to assess threats from here.”

“Come on.” She waves her hand in a catch-the-hell-up motion. “I need an impartial sounding board.”

Gary looks at her for a moment, before speeding up and walking between her and the street, his hand hovering near where she knows there is a sidearm.

“My life is a mess,” she tells him and grins when he snorts.

“Everyone’s life is a mess, Miss Lewis.”

“Yeah, but most people aren’t subjected to tabloid speculation. Most people aren’t suspected of sleeping with their fathers.”

Gary, who reminds her just a tiny bit of Clint in the way he walks and stalks and does not ever look surprised, shrugs. “True, but most people will never have a reason to be.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

They walk in silence a while, Gary’s eyes are always on their surroundings and somehow it’s comforting that he doesn’t answer her. Silence is preferable to being placated, after all. They don’t walk all that long and pretty soon she’s been deposited in the elevator and Gary smiles ruefully at her as the doors shut between them.

***

When she gets back to her living room, Darcy has JARVIS compile all of the magazines and newspaper articles that she’s mentioned in and spends all afternoon looking through them. They are absurd and false and she’s certain that it’s humanly impossible to be the Avengers resident concubine like so many of these rags believe. 

“I swear to god, if that were true, they’d never catch me walking anywhere. I’d just be numb and broken from the waist down. Do they not think of these things?”

“Why do _you_ think of these things?” Clint asks, a horrified look on his face. 

“They made me. Bad journalism made me do it, Clint.”

“Which one of us do you think would be the last straw?” Natasha asks, very seriously. “I am tempted to say Thor, but he and Jane appear to do okay - she’s still mobile.”

“I think it’s the combination of all of you. I mean, yeah, Jane doesn’t have nerve damage or anything, but she’s also not trying to accommodate a super soldier, a giant rage machine, a man inside a robot, a super assassin and the best hero ever, Mr. Barton over there.”

“Thanks, dear,” Clint says sarcastically. “Could we stop speculating about your incestuous polyamorous pretend life now? I do want to have sex sometime... ever again.”

A new image pops up in front of them and JARVIS says, “An article was just posted on perezhilton dot com, Miss Lewis.”

“Aw, you were doing so good with calling me Darcy,” she chides him, but forgets all about it almost immediately. “Oh no. Oh shit!”

There at the top of the page is an image and, as is standard for this website, it has an unsteady, toddler-like white scrawl of lettering across it. There are two women, obviously from different images, lined up to look as though they are facing one another. One is Darcy and one is Maria Stark. The white writing says: _Have I met you before?_ and the headline says: _Starkly Obvious Oedipal Complex?_.

She clicks the link and reads the article aloud, because she’s apparently a masochist: _We at perezhilton.com got our Maria Stark Foundation Gala invitation today. Yay! And while we’re super excited for the charity event of the year and for all of the good works they do (Team Tony!), we were a little surprised by something we noticed. Do you think Mr. Stark himself has realized that his rumored side-piece is a dead ringer for his very own mom? But, hey, we’re not here to judge. Remember, your kink is okay, Tony. lol_

“God damn it,” Darcy says, unable to ignore the way the number of shares and comments steadily increases. “God damn it.”

***

Clint is of the opinion that they should just admit the truth and he shares said opinion readily. And frequently. Nat, to Darcy’s unmitigated horror, agrees.

They’re sitting in the living room after dinner a few days later, Darcy’s on her way to getting good and plowed, and Clint has once again brought this subject up.

“You are secret agents, you’re supposed to be all lies all the time,” she chides. “Nat’s like the female Rasputin, she’s not supposed to be telling the truth!”

Nat rolls her eyes.

“Is this about the tabloids?” Steve asks. 

“Yeah.”

“Well,” he continues, sitting next to Darcy on the couch. “While I do think the truth is usually a better option, maybe not in this case. The truth might place you in a dangerous position.”

“Truth about what?” Tony asks, entering the room with Pepper right behind him.

Somehow, because she’s apparently the only one paying attention to these things, Darcy has managed to keep the Maria Stark comparisons a secret, despite the way the internet has taken to this particular topic, but she knows she can’t hide it forever. There’s a tumblr dedicated to it, for Christ’s sake.

“The nature of Darcy’s presence here,” Steve provides.

“Why would we tell the truth about that?” 

“Because the media is getting ugly,” Clint says. “And very disturbing.”

Tony looks confused. “A little speculation about our sex lives is not that disturbing, all things considered.”

Clint and Nat look at each other and carry out a conversation silently, while Darcy shakes her head and sighs, resigned. “Here,” she says, tapping a few things on her tablet and handing it to Tony.

For his part, Tony is quiet for longer than is usual and then starts howling with laughter. “Oh, that’s classic. That’s great.”

Darcy sinks lower in her chair and sucks on the bendy straw sticking out of her tequila sunrise.

Steve is reading over Tony’s shoulder and gasps in horror, his jaw tightening and his expression going hard. “That’s unacceptable. Why would anyone want to write these things?”

“Shock value sells, Cap,” Tony says. “It’s pretty amazing that this is the conclusion they come to instead of the more obvious and actual one.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Darcy says. “Keep reading.”

A moment of silence passes while Bruce and Thor gather around the tablet and everyone reads the article. Another moment passes once the tablet has been set down.

“Okay, that’s too far,” Tony snaps, turning on his heel and marching toward the hall.

“No. Don’t. You’ll do something stupid,” Darcy calls before he can leave and blow up MSNBC headquarters or Perez Hilton’s house or some blogger in his mom’s basement. “So they talked to some old classmates. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“Not that big of deal?!” Steve this time. “They... they...”

“They impugned her honor,” Thor fills in. “And I agree, action must be taken. Darcy, they cannot insult you thus.”

Darcy sighs. “They can and they did. I don’t care about that. I had fun in college, no shame in that. They’re not lying. I mean, yeah, they’re being rude and implying things that aren’t true, but everything they said is technically fact. Sex, booze, et cetera.”

“That doesn’t mean -”

“Steve,” Darcy interrupts. “It’s fine. It’s not fine, but it’s fine.”

“Tony, you can’t -”

“It’s her choice, Cap. She wants to stay undercover, she gets to. They can speculate about my weird sexual fetishes all they want.” But even as Tony says it, he is clearly furious.

***

Two days later, Darcy decides if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

It’s Drinks With Jane and Thor Night that Friday and Darcy decides to dig out her old Jackie O Halloween costume. She pins her hair up, but forgoes the pillbox hat. She decides on more modern pumps and no hose, because she’s not trying to be too obvious. 

Clint looks at her knowingly when she finally emerges from the bathroom. He laughs. “New tactic?”

“This will either be awesome or terrible. Either way, it will be hilarious.”

“Okay,” Clint says with an indulgent look. “But I’m not growing a douchy mustache to play the Howard to your Maria.”

“Good. If you did that I don’t think I could keep from comparing it to my dad’s douchy mustache and that would make our sex life very awkward.” 

Clint tilts his head to one side and regards her for a moment and Darcy shifts uncomfortably, because she knows what she said and she knows what he’s going to say in response. “That’s new. Your dad, huh? Not Tony, not your asshole boss, not that guy who knocked up your mom?”

She shrugs. “We’re coming up on the event horizon here. I figure I’d better get used to calling him that out loud.”

Clint doesn’t say anything, but he does give her a small smile and that’s actually better. 

At Darcy’s urging and Jane’s chagrin (and Thor’s utter delight) they go to a much fancier restaurant than normal. Typically, they’re a margaritas-at-the-local-taco-shop type of group. They don’t do high profile, which Clint defines as any place having an appetizer over twenty dollars, but Darcy has an agenda and she can’t make any headway if they’re hidden at Mi Pueblo with Coronas upside down in their margaritas.

The restaurant is dim and chic and there’s no room at all. People are waiting outside, corralled behind a red velvet rope and three hundred pounds of bouncer. Undeterred, she bypasses the line and states very clearly that she’s there for Tony Stark’s standing reservation. They have one of course, because Darcy is many things, but lax on her research is not one of them. The hostess, a tall woman with an impressive head of curls, glares at Darcy as if she’s insane and disgusting. Without so much as doing Darcy the courtesy of being discreet, the woman snaps up the phone and starts dialing, which is perfect, because the point here is to be seen.

“Yes, this is Misha at Lush and I have a woman... what’s your name?”

“Darcy.”

“A Darcy here to be seated at Mr. Stark’s table. She is not on the list.” At this Misha turns her nose up and sighs.

“Yes,” Misha says into the phone, sounding annoyed. “Thank you.”

Thor and Jane appear behind her a moment later and Darcy takes a fair measure of satisfaction at the way Misha’s eyes go wide and she does her level best not to act like seeing Thor in person is awesome and terrifying. They’re nearly to the table when Clint shows up and slips his hand in hers. Darcy notices the way people notice.

***

A few days later and Darcy finds herself wading through a crowded deli, Tony hot on her heels, making the biggest of fusses. He’s always making the biggest of fusses.

They reach the back of the line and before she can ask him what he wants and then send him to the car, which is where he is supposed to be anyway, the entire room fills with the sound of his voice. _Of course_ his phone would have a loudspeaker function. Of course.

“Hi,” his amplified voice says. “Some of you may know me as Iron Man. Oh, who am I kidding? All of you know me. Look, we’re in a bit of a rush. If you let us cut to the front, everyone’s lunch is on me.”

There is a rumble of approval and the crowd of people part to let them through. (“No Moses jokes, Tony.”) He rushes forward, while his hand clamps around hers as he drags her toward the counter. She smiles as the tell-tale flash of camera phones pop in her periphery.

This is turning out easier than she thought.

***

The following Saturday, Darcy takes Natasha to breakfast. Natasha, of course, is in on her little game and smiles a little too often, feeds her a bite of her eggs and brushes fingers across Darcy’s hand. 

“You know,” Darcy says on the way home. “If I swung that way, you’d ruin me for all other women.”

Nat smiles. “Well, that was Yvette Hemming, accountant, chess prodigy, lesbian. She would ruin you. _I_ would never sleep with you.”

Darcy pulls a face. “Well, shit. I think I’m insulted. No, I know I’m insulted.”

“Not like that. I would never sleep with you because you’re attached to Clint. I don’t poach. Also, your father’s horrible.”

Darcy smiles. “You’re such a liar. You love my father.”

Nat says nothing but the smile on her face is affirmation enough.

***

It’s all great fun for about three weeks. She takes Steve to the museum and convinces Thor to give her a piggyback ride through the park. Tony thinks it’s all hilarious and starts collecting all of the articles about it. Some of the more reputable news sources have started calling to request interviews and when their requests go unanswered, they turn to old friends and neighbors. Her college roommates have much to say and a few old boyfriends chime in with stories of her wicked ways, but none of that matters at all until it backfires, which it does with a very high level of effectiveness.

Darcy is elbows deep in the bottom half of a prototype hovercraft-motorcycle hybrid (some good things do come from insomnia driven Star Wars marathons, thank you very much), when her phone rings. She lets it go to voicemail because she’s almost got the wires threaded through this section and she’s not dropping them now. The phone rings again and she ignores it again. Then it rings again.

“Son of a...” She doesn’t drop the wires though, because she’s going to finish this, damn it.

“Darcy,” JARVIS says. “There is a call from your mother and she says it is very urgent.”

“Put her on speaker.”

“Darcy?”

“Hey, mom.”

“Darcy... Don’t worry, I’m fine, but you should probably know that last night someone sort of attacked the house.”

There’s a long silence and Darcy drops the wires. “What do you mean sort of?”

“Oh, you know, brick through the window, note that says we’re a disgusting family of heathens, arson. That sort of thing.”

“Arson?!”

“Luckily, those agents were still watching the house or might have been worse.”

“I’m going to kill and then kiss Coulson.”

“Look, Darce, I’m being really cool about this -”

“Yeah,” Darcy says cautiously, because her mother is many things but cool in any sense of the word is not one of them. “Why is that?”

“But you have to stop your little adventure. I don’t care if you come clean or if you just go under the radar. Anyway you do it, I don’t care, but I swear to God if anyone targets me again, I will out you to the public.”

“Mother!”

There is a sigh on the other end of the phone and Darcy knows where this is going, which is right into the toilet. She should have known better than to even entertain the idea that her mom could be rational or supportive about anything.

“Darcy, this is for your own good. You’re out there making yourself look like a harlot and all of this Oedipal Complex stuff... Oh, Darcy, it’s disgusting. I’ve respected your choices, poor as they are, because it is your life. But now it’s affecting mine and I won’t put up with it.”

“So you’re giving me an ultimatum? Stop by whatever means necessary or you’ll stop it for me?”

“Pretty much, yes. It’s not only your life that you’re affecting.”

Darcy sighs and says she’ll figure it out. As hard as it is to admit, her mother is right. Horrible and mean, but right. While the people she’s living with, the people that she sees everyday, support this tactic, they are not the only people involved. It’s time to be done.

Naturally, it’s not that easy. Pepper helps her draft a press release, which turns out great but then sits in her desk for a week, because oh god how can she ever release that into the world? Maybe the more prudent course of action is to just drop out of the spotlight.

For a solid month, Darcy does nothing to provoke any of the media. She barely leaves the tower and when she does, it’s to grab take out or go to a meeting or some other benign errand. They speculate that she’s on the outs with the team, that they’re breaking up, that she’s been reprimanded for her public displays, but the attention they pay her doesn’t lessen. If anything, speculation increases.

She’s working one morning, her hover-speeder coming along nicely, with Tony completely entrenched in an upgrade to the Hulk Buster armor, when Frank peeks his head in. 

“Miss Lewis? Mr Stark?” Frank says sheepishly. 

“What’s up?”

“Miss Potts wants to know why neither of you are getting ready for the gala.” He looks slightly terrified to be asking.

“We’re not going,” they say in unison.

“Uh... I uh...”

“Spit it out,” Tony says from across the room.

“She says I’m supposed to have JARVIS call her. JARVIS can you... er... call Miss Potts?”

“JARVIS,” Tony warns. “Don’t you dare.”

“Very well, Sir. But I must insist that you contact her soon.”

Tony’s head pops up from behind the giant chest of the armor he’s got half open. “Why? What do you know?” He asks, suspiciously.

“She has made certain instructions that you won’t like, should this not go as she wishes.”

“What does that even mean?” Tony gripes. “Okay, call her.”

“Tony,” Pepper answers, sounding ready for a fight. 

“Hi, honey. Is there something you need to tell me?”

“You have three hours to be ready and out the door. You - and you, Darcy - are going to this gala.”

“We’re not going,” they say again in unison.

“Frank, give us a minute,” Pepper’s voice says gently, but the moment he’s gone, she turns her stern CEO voice back on. “This is your _mother’s_ function, Tony. Even when you were falling down drunk every day of the week, you pulled it together for this. You are going because the alternative is beneath you, you’re bigger than this. And Darcy, do you really want to miss an opportunity to honor your grandmother? You’re _both_ bigger than this. Also, if you refuse, JARVIS will shut down the shop and lock you both out. And Clint and Natasha are standing by to deliver you to me by force.”

There is a long stretch of silence and finally Darcy says, “Okay. Fine.”

“Oh, you traitor!”

“Thank you, Darcy, please drag your father upstairs so I don’t have to turn his AI against him.”

“Mutineers!” Tony gripes. “You know that’s a terrible crime, mutiny? Punishable by death. Treason, essentially.”

“Come on. Lets just get this over with. We can get good and drunk and maybe it won’t be so painful.”

“Jesus, is that optimism? Stop that right now.”

***

They arrive at the gala, which is held in the rarely used and never mentioned Stark Mansion, embroiled in a race to finish off the second bottle of champagne in the limo before they pull in. Tony gets the last pour and therefore wins, but since her head has started to go slightly dizzy and she can’t stop laughing, it’s probably better this way. 

“You cheated,” she tells him, flopping back on the seat.

“I did no such thing,” he says, draping an arm across her shoulders.

They’re silent a long minute as they inch along that last block toward the overly large house and the party neither want to be at.

“I hate this place,” Tony says, looking straight ahead.

“I know.”

“My dad was a dick.”

“I know.”

“I’m not a dick, right?”

“Apropos of what?”

Before he can answer the car swings through the gates, cameras flashing and asinine questions carrying into the back seat. Darcy ignores it, looks at Tony. She’s about to say more, to assure him that in regard to being her dad, no, he is not a dick, but she doesn’t quite know how to do it. Emotions between them aren’t really an explored territory and she can’t seem to make the words form.

The driveway is teeming with stupidly expensive cars, looping their way to the front walk and then out again and the one they are in is no different. They pull up and the driver circles around the car. 

“Look, Tony,” Darcy starts, about to plunge forward and say something reassuring, because being in that house must be crappy enough, what with all of the daddy issues and such, but the driver opens the door and Tony climbs out, a hard look on his face.

They stand by the car a moment, letting the few permitted photographers snap their shots, smiling and pretending they’re not dying to be anywhere but there, before he crooks an elbow and she slips her arm through his and they are lost to the mass of people inside.

For well over an hour (since they slipped through the door and Pepper immediately pegged them as mostly drunk and regulated the hell out of that situation), Darcy is passed from one Avenger to the other. First, Steve ushers her to the canapes and force feeds her mini quiches and tiny pieces of seafood on cute little spoons. After that, Bruce escorts her outside so she can bum a smoke off some guy and hide in a corner, because drunk smoking is something she does sometimes, sue her. Tony shows up, citing fatherly ESP, and smokes the second half of her cigarette. Bruce, having had enough, slips out into the back yard for some quiet and Tony pulls a flask from his pocket. After which, it is decided that they cannot be left to their own devices and Clint is employed to keep Darcy occupied while Pepper takes custody of Tony and glowers severely.

Coming up on hour two of the admittedly lovely affair, Darcy is dancing with Clint, head on his chest and arms around his shoulders. She can feel the way his muscles tense and loosen as he moves and the gin and tonics he’s been allocating to her have her feeling like maybe it’s time to go home so she can lick said muscles.

“While that sounds awesome,” Clint says, “we’re not done here. We still have to listen to speeches and I’m pretty sure there’s dinner in about two minutes.”

She looks up at him, eyes wide. “Did I say that out loud?”

He leans in close to her ear. “Yes and if we could do it without ending up on the scolding side of one of Cap’s lectures, I’d let you lick me right here.”

Darcy laughs and rakes her nails down his back, because fuck. Probably she should be embarrassed, but all she really feels is floaty and turned on. Defiantly, she lifts up on her toes and kisses him, letting her tongue slide into his mouth, reveling in the way he melts right into her, in the way he kisses her back and slides his hands around her waist. They’ve done this a million times but it’s still just as excited as the first time.

“Ahem,” someone says and Clint pulls away, smirking.

“Can’t take you anywhere,” Nat says, not bothering to sound reproachful. “Come on, break it up. People are starting to stare.”

“Let them stare,” Darcy says, inching closer to Clint and smiling when his arm tightens around her.

“Excuse me,” an amplified voice says, cutting across whatever Nat was about to say. “If everyone would please stay exactly where you are, this is a hostage situation.”

Darcy looks up, staring right at Clint’s blank face. His eyes are sweeping the room, even as his head stays perfectly still. Natasha has turned slightly, looking over Clint’s shoulder and Darcy marvels at how easily and quickly they slip into spy mode. A series of tiny movements and they’re shoulder to shoulder, aware and poised for whatever might happen. It’s impressive at any distance, but up close it’s downright terrifying.

The crowd falls silent, staring at the stage where two masked men have taken up residence. One is holding a small microphone and a semi-automatic. The other has a nine millimeter in one hand and a woman in the other. Darcy’s blood runs cold.

“Mom?”

“Darcy, don’t” Clint says, holding her tighter so she doesn’t charge the stage.

“Here’s the deal,” the man with the microphone says. “No one needs to get hurt. We’re not here to cause any kind of unnecessary violence. Do not do anything stupid and we won’t hurt you. We don’t want to hurt you.”

Clint mumbles something and Nat responds but Darcy doesn’t catch it because she’s too fixated on her mom’s tear-streaked face, the silver tape across her mouth, and the way her body is shaking.

“Miss Lewis, we know you’re in the crowd somewhere. Present yourself or we start taking shots at your mother.”

Clint grips her harder. “Don’t.”

“Clint! I have to.”

“No. We’re working on a plan. Thor’s outside with Bruce. Tony’s down the hall. Just give us a minute.”

“Come on, you little whore,” the man continues. “You and your group of _superheroes_ need to be taught a lesson about the nature of sin.”

“I have a question,” Tony says, emerging from the hallway, armor on, faceplate up. “If we’re talking about sin, why not punish me?”

Somehow, Darcy manages to feel relieved and even more terrified all at once.

“Don’t try anything, Stark. You make a move and we blow the whole place.” The other man, the one who hasn’t done any talking, pushes Vanessa to the floor and steps forward. He pulls off his jacket to reveal some kind of very complicated looking bomb strapped to his chest. “There’s two more hidden around the house.”

“Fuck,” Clint says. “Okay, guys, new plan.”

“So, let me get this straight,” Tony says, “you want to punish Darcy and the rest of us for the way she chooses to live her life?”

“You are all filthy, you’re sinners and the Lord says you must be punished.”

“Oh, did he tell you that himself or was this, like, a second hand sort of message? And what exactly did he tell you to do, because I think - correct me if I’m wrong - murdering innocent bystanders is frowned upon.”

The man glares at Tony, seething. “The Lord will make you pay, the Lord will make all sinners pay, I am just a vessel through which he carries out the punishment. It is not my place to question.”

“Okay, but which Lord are we talking about -” Tony starts, but before he can get very far, the masked man squeezes off several shots, all of which ping off of his suit and hurl in different directions. 

The mass of people panic, dropping to the floor and running for the doors. It is instantly chaos.

Clint pushes Darcy to the floor, forcing her into an awkward crawl until she’s against the wall and he’s crouched in front of her. 

“Nice job, Hoss,” she can hear Tony saying. “Now look what you’ve done.”

“Don’t come any closer! We will blow the building!”

Tony is hovering not too far from the stage and she knows he can take them out with, like, a half a thought, but there’s the matter of the bombs, so he won’t. 

“How about we let all of these people go and you and I settle this?” Tony asks, dropping to the floor, trying to draw their attention.

“And lose my leverage? No thanks.”

Still squished against the wall, Darcy is doing her best not to panic, but her best isn’t very good. 

“Hey,” Clint says, one hand cupping her cheek. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

She nods. “I’m okay.” She’s not okay.

Around her, people are crouched down, some crying, others oddly silent. She can see the crowds around the doors and the way they keep trying to pry them open to no avail. But no more shots are fired and a quick look toward the stage reveals her mom is still huddled on the floor, alive, but terrified.

Darcy knows that the spot she’s crouched in, the spot Clint and Nat ushered her into, was not randomly chosen. It’s no accident that there is a bar, a catering table, and two pillars between them and Thing One and Thing Two. It doesn’t do a lot to calm her nerves, but it does offer some privacy. 

“Here’s the plan,” Nat says, pulling a gun from her thigh holster. “Bruce is outside with security looking for any signs of explosives. Thor is on the roof ready to drop in when we might need him. Tony will continue to do what he’s doing and then presumably whatever he wants. Clint, you get in position and...” She trails off, apparently listening to whatever one of the team is saying in her ear. “Scratch that. Can’t kill him without triggering the bomb. JARVIS is working on that.”

“What if I talk to them?” Darcy says and is pleased when neither immediately discounts this idea.

Nat shrugs. “Might work, but we don’t want to put you in their line of sight.” 

“We don’t have to. Tell my dad to hack into the speaker system and let me transmit through your earpiece. They won’t know where I am.”

Clint starts to relay the plan to Tony, but has to stop every few words and state his case and it sounds like a painful start-and-stop argument (like most arguments where Tony Stark is involved) until finally, Darcy reaches up and yanks the damn thing out of Clint’s ear.

“Ow!”

Stuffing the tiny bud into her own ear, Darcy says, “Stop being weird about this. It will work.”

“No. You’re staying right where you are and I’m handling it. Though, I might need an assist from your boy-toy.”

“And then what? Take them by force and hope that none of the bombs are triggered?”

“It’s two guys with some cheap-ass explosives they built from stuff at Home Depot. I can take these guys.”

Darcy huffs. “Tell me again how you got into The Mandarin’s mansion?”

“That was entirely different. They are not me.”

“Apparently they are!”

“You are not getting involved!”

“I’m already involved!”

“I said no!”

“JARVIS, I’m going to need you to -”

“Don’t you dare!”

“JARVIS!”

“God damn it, Darcy -”

“I swear to God, Dad, just let me do this!”

They’re silent for several long seconds, aware rather suddenly that the crowd has fallen silent and that the echoes of their conversation are bouncing around the room.

“Oops,” JARVIS says, entirely unapologetic. “I was under the impression we were taking control of the sound system.”

“What did she just say,” the masked man yells, his voice failing to carry without the benefit of the microphone. “What did she say?”

Darcy sighs. “I said, ‘I swear to God, Dad, just let me do this.’”

“And I was about to say absolutely not and over my dead body and not while you live under my roof,” Tony adds. “You know, typical mean parental stuff.”

Somehow, this is more chaotic than the gunshots and that really should say many, many things about American society, but Darcy doesn’t get a chance to think about that just now.

“Whoa!” Thing Two says, dropping his gun and reaching for the straps that are holding the explosives to his body. “Wait just a minute. I did not sign up for this.”

“What are you doing?” His partner says, frantic. “This doesn’t change anything! She’s still carrying on with the team. She is still vile!”

“Excuse you!” Tony says, lifting a hand and letting his faceplate drop with a menacing _clink_.

“For all we know, you let her share all of their beds!”

“Oh, come on!” Darcy says, her voice echoing around the room, still fed through the speakers. “We’re not a big orgy. And even if we were, that’s none of your business.”

And then, out of nowhere, Cap dives across the stage and pins Righteous McTalkington to the floor, guns scattering with a clang. There’s a very brief scuffle and Cap manhandles the man a little too roughly before Nat jogs over and hands him some... is that garrote wire? Of course it’s garrote wire. Anyway, Cap ties the man’s hands and by that point, Tony’s got what amounts to all of his weapons pointed at Bad Guy Number Two, not that it matters much, since he’s got both hands up and no intention of fighting back.

“Hey, man,” Number Two says. “I’m out of this. This is not why I’m here.”

Jane is already kneeling by Vanessa when Darcy makes her way to the stage, but instead of relieved and thankful, Darcy finds her mother furious. Vanessa barely looks at her, doesn’t speak, and moments later when the room is full of paramedics and police, she takes the opportunity to slip away while Darcy’s back is turned.

It hits her harder than she expects and she stands alone and a little broken amid the chaos, people swirling and shifting around her. She feels like she's in the eye of a hurricane. Everything around her is madness and she is just still and heavy; her heart is a dead weight in her chest and tears are stinging her eyes and when she looks up, Iron Man is standing halfway across the room, watching her. It’s too much and she feels the first few tears spill over and run down her face as it crumples. Everything happens in a blur then; her feet move forward as the sobbing starts, the sound of hydraulics and pressure valves and hinges and springs fill her ears, Tony emerges from the suit, and he steps forward and catches her.

Darcy doesn’t like to cry and she doesn’t do it often, this time is different and as soon as she starts, she can’t stop. She sobs against his shoulder for a long time, careless that so many people are watching, that there are probably videos being uploaded to the internet as they stand there. There is something just too raw inside her and it hurts too much to even worry about anything else. Tony doesn’t say anything, just lets her cry, keeps his arms tight around her shoulders. She’s grateful.

After a long time, when she’s settled a little and her sobs have lessened to something more like hiccups, she pulls away a bit, not enough to make him let go, but enough to look up and talk to him. “Sorry.”

“For having vile human emotions? You should be.”

Something like a laugh escapes and she almost manages a smile. “Thanks.”

He shrugs and says nothing.

And then her face starts to crumple again. “She hates me.”

“No, no, don’t do that. She doesn’t hate you. She loves you, she’s just got way more issues than she can deal with and it isn’t even about you, not really.” He tilts her chin up. “Trust me. I’m an expert at this shit.”

Darcy considers him for a moment and then says, because it’s true and he should know, “You’re a good dad. You’re the best dad.”

***

“Please, just stop.”

“No.”

“I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I.”

“You are on my very last nerve. The very last one.”

“Not my problem.”

“Wrong, it is entirely your problem.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Absolutely.”

“Bring it on.”

“Jesus, you’re not supposed to actually shoot me!”

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“I’m seriously considering shooting both of you.”

“You do that and I’ll deactivate you, I swear to god.”

“It’s a good thing this suit will never see actual combat.”

“What do you call shooting me _with actual bullets_?”

“Integrity testing.”

“Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt -”

“No, you’re not.”

“But you’re being requested at headquarters. It appears Dr Doom has sent a message.”

“Is it the kind with tentacles?”

“I hate the kind with tentacles.”

“It is the kind with armor plating and lasers.”

“Awesome.”

“See you at dinner.”

“Thai?”

“Sure.”

“Be safe, Dad.”

“Pfft. My middle name.”


End file.
